Thursday, December 2, 2010

[ALT: Having a positive attitude is almost tautologically good for your mental health, and extreme stress can hurt your immune system, but that doesn't mean you should feel like shit for feeling like shit.]

I kind of winced when Randy put this one up. It has that whole 'look at the obvious applicability to my situation!' thing going on for it, and that just makes it awkward.

Aside from that, kind of boring. Some of you seemed to like it, some others of you seemed to think it was the worst thing ever. I have approximately zero thoughts about the joke--it is just boring.

The art is interesting, though! Let's talk about that. The past two comics, Randy seems to be trying out new artistic elements: the uselessly placed last panel of yesterday, the weird shade of the background and the wombpanel of today. The problem is his art just doesn't have the ability to support conveying new ideas. I think one of the reasons the 5-minute comics worked so well is he didn't try to use the art at all. They were unapologetically crudely drawn.

Oh, and there's the throw-away jokes! The D&D stat-sheet was vaguely amusing. Less amusing was the one from yesterday, which I forgot to mention when writing the post: the address given was on Ash Tree Lane, which is a clear reference to House of Leaves. I'm normally all about references to HoL, but this one had no reason to be there, and felt like it was just trying to pander to those of us who have read it. YOU DID NOT SUCCEED, RANDY.

I'd apologize for being late, but I hate you all, so I'm not really sorry.

However, I did have to stare at the last panel for a few seconds to realize what was going on. In fact, at first I thought all the reporters just got piss drunk or some shit before I realized that they were dying.

Also, why is the word "House" in dark blue in this review? Am I going insane? Has the madness finally begun to take over? IS IT TIME FOR ME TO DON THE ROBE OF ERATIFUS AND LEAD THE UNHOLY ARMY TO DEFEAT THE EVIL LIGHT GOD OF THE NORTH?

It's a clear reference to House of Leaves. I'm normally all about references to HoL, but this one had no reason to be there, and felt like it was just trying to pander to those of us who have read it. YOU DID NOT SUCCEED, ROBBY.

The last comic is pretty okay. The xkcdsuxredux take on it is very funny, indeed.

But two things slightly bother me:- Did Randall just forget to attribute the speech to anyone in the first panel? (i.e., did he forget to put a tail on that speech?)- Did these people, NASA scientists, really believe putting arsenic in drinks was a good idea? Maybe this is a spiteful comic targeted at NASA...

Anyway, straight from my twitter, this text prefaces the link to today's xkcd:

Yeah, I think the point of that twitter is that every scientists dream is killing everyone who doesn't agree with them, or every member of the silly plebeian public who doesn't understand what they do.

I can't speak for scientists, but judging from the attitudes of most of the scientists I know, this is a false assumption.

The problem with the minor sloppy errors is that they exist, and are rather too common, not that he doesn't give notice. Can you imagine how rubbish it would be for the archives of a comic to be filled with little notes saying "Used to be "specifcly" before I changed it" or "The date here was originally wrong". Leaving a note for a minor change is an incredibly stupid idea. Every webcomic occasionally needs to correct a minor spelling issue or something, but I defy you to find a webcomic that operates the sort of ludicrous "Every minor change must be meticulously logged dammit!" policy that you seem to be expecting of Randy.

Once again, problem is the sloppiness itself, not the documentation of the sloppiness.

Goddamit Randy. I was expecting at worst, that you would ignore yesterday's news completely. I was HOPING we'd get some quality nerd rage over the news coverage. After all, xkcd boldly takes the stand that unless reporters explain the difference between a million and a billion every time these numbers come up, they are actively lying.

But no. Not only is there no nerd rage, but Randy fucking repeats the rageworthy aspect of the news coverage in the TITLE and the FIRST PANEL. I guess I've got to do the rage myself.

What was announced yesterday was not "arsenic-based life". It doesn't have "arsenic-based DNA". It's a typical carbon-based life form with carbon-based DNA that has the (admittedly interesting) ability to substitute arsenic for phosphorous. We don't talk about phosphorous based life/DNA, because phosphorous only makes up about 0.6% of most organisms.

@Sepiai don't mean this to sound snotty or sarcastic at all, but thank you for pointing that out. i hadn't realized that at first, and now that you mention it, that is exactly what is going on, and i am going to go check the internets to read more about it to understand it more thoroughly.who says people can't be civil on the web? :D

The idea of speaking of "phosphorus-based life" is obscure, but not technically wrong. If you want to get super-anal, after all, there's way more hydrogen than carbon by molar quantities. When people say carbon-based they ought to say "carbohydrate-based", since there's a lot of oxygen in there, too, and we also have the water vs. ammonia debacle.

To be honest, it's not surprising that Randy overstated it. He's a physicist and has consistently fucked up biology references or made them stupid (cuttlefish, anyone?)

Consider that when Gizmodo heard about GFAJ-1, they announced that NASA had discovered new life.

Speaking of early XKCD bullshit, I sometimes wonder: is #15 the first appearance of Megan? Is this the position that Randall initially fantasised about her being in long before she was spawning gun-toting tots?

I think the ATTEMPTED DnD reference would have been much better if he had actually pulled it off properly. That is to say, maybe use actual stat categories rather than faking it. The top one is HR, which is supposed to be heart rate. Okay, that makes sense; it's something such a device would actually measure. CON, short for constitution is the one that makes the most sense; it measures health. SPD, presumably speed, is not at all a DnD or any type of roleplaying stat. The other 3 are also featured in DnD, but then that leaves 3 more that are conspicuously absent. Why would the machine measure charisma but not intelligence or wisdom? Ugh. It pisses me off because it shows off, yet again, the "good concept, bad execution" archetype of xkcd. I didn't even notice the (attempted) joke until I saw it mentioned somewhere, but now it bothers me greatly that he went for the joke and half-assed it. I wish I had never been alerted to its presence in this comic. BTW, this is coming from someone who's never played DnD; just familiar with its mechanics from Order of the Stick (a good stick figure webcomic) and games such as Diablo.

Also, wtf is with the pose in the womb-panel? That is the most awkward (both drawn and irl) contortion of one's body that I can imagine.

Step it up Rob. Just because you are neutral about the comic doesn't mean there aren't things to critique about it. That is the point of this blog, right?

(It's deformed and misses the mark, but you can still tell what it was supposed to be. Just like many of his jokes!)

And to those that would call me a hater or such and thus dismiss my criticism: I actually found 829 to elicit both a smile and a chuckle, and can't find anything bad to say about it. The result of which is I still have hope for xkcd being good in the future.

"Step it up Rob. Just because you are neutral about the comic doesn't mean there aren't things to critique about it. That is the point of this blog, right?"

I don't critique things that fill me with an unending sense of apathy. in my estimation Carl's biggest problem was trying to critique things that he just didn't give a fuck about. he tried to live up to a standard that he basically couldn't.

I, on the other hand, have nothing but contempt for my audience, and have no interest in living up to anyone's standards.

Damn, Blogger ate my comment, but since I don't feel like re-typing it, here's the short version

hansolo22: you're an idiot. There's no precedent for Randall liking/being a fan of/even referencing DnD so to hate something that has no reason to be a DnD reference for not being an accurate DnD reference makes you more moronic than most of the cuddlefish we get here.

But, Sherlock, didn't Randall aggrandize Gary Gygax himself at the time of his death? Was this ignorant lip service to the prime geek gods? Is this better or worse than being true to one's self? What does a dog doing nothing in the night prove? Shouldn't the dog have done nothing in the night in the first place?

Well we can all tell that you're right about one thing! You definitely don't play D&D. Every character has a speed! Here's an example in case you don't believe me:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/uploads/2009/02/25/jimc_2.jpg

This is, of course, Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade's character sheet for Jim Darkmagic. Now look up at the top right corner. Jim Darkmagic has a speed of 6! Speed is also a stat in earlier editions of D&D besides edition 4, which Krahulik was playing.

"See!", I hear you whine, "speed isn't listed with Str, Con, Dex, etc!" And that's correct. This is because the core 6 stats are defined either by dice rolls, or by a point distribution system. Speed, on the other hand is defined by your character's race, armor type, and how much shit they're carrying around.

However, the only relevant question is "Would a doctor care about someone's speed?" And in the language of D&D the answer would be yes, since various status effects (poisons, hexes, etc.) can cause a temporary reduction in speed. In other words a healthy speed is a healthy character.

Wow. You guys have no clue how happy you made me by being so offended by my post. I think I now understand why Rob still keeps this site up.

@Raven - There (used to?) be people on here who would say to any criticism, "You're just hating on the comic to hate", which is not the case with me.

@Sherlock - This is so clearly a DnD/roleplaying reference that not recognizing it as such is beyond my comprehension.

@Arthur - You're clearly a douchebag, but at least you contributed something. Tell me, when have you ever seen a stat sheet with 5 stats? Even I know that there's 6. I just don't understand why Randall would make a reference like that, but do it so poorly. Nitpicking aside, that was my main point.

I've never seen a stat sheet with only the core stats either. I don't see you whining that his will save isn't listed on the screen either.

Here's the problem. It's already hard to read the stat text. Do you want Randiddle to make the text even smaller just to cram in three more stats? Would that make the joke funnier, or just make it harder for the reader?

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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